How the NFL Draft Can Help You With Online Trust

This is one of my favorite times of the year for sports.  The time of hope, promise and turnaround.  That means it is time for the NFL Draft!  My team, the Cleveland Browns, always enters this part of the year and the draft with hopes of getting the amazing college football prospect that will revitalize the team, give us a winning season for once and hopefully (yeah right) a trip to the Super Bowl.  The issue is that you never know if a player your team picks in the draft is going to turn out like you hoped and will deliver on all of the expectations you have built up for them or turn out to be a bust.  Or worse yet, that player ends up breaking the law and not only is he a bust, but he then becomes a shame to the team and the city.  In many ways this is similar to the issue of figuring out who you can trust online for doing business and for online shopping.

In the NFL Draft process, the teams that do the best job are the ones that do the most diligence on the college football prospects.  These are just some of the things that NFL teams and scouts do in the diligence and research process before selecting a player in the draft:

1) Conduct extensive background checks;

2) Put players through multiple interviews and give them tests;

3) Review, analyze and dissect a player’s past performances in college games and;

4) Talk to their coaches, teachers and other experts.

That is all done before draft day and before a player is selected.  And its all done on hundreds of players.  The interesting thing is what NFL teams are looking for in college players is very  similar to what shoppers look for before buying online: 1) a track record of success; 2) good character; 3) reliability and trustworthiness; 4) the ability to deliver and meet expectations and 5) someone you can depend on and that can be your “go to” person.

All of these traits are exactly what people look for for in businesses that operate online as indications of whether you can trust that business.  The commonality between the NFL teams that put players through these tests and online shoppers is: Information!  Information is king.  It is not only having access to that information but it is also having the right information about trustworthiness and reliability to make an informed decision about buying from an online store or selecting a contractor or consultant online that you have come across online.

So next time you are out looking to buy online or select a contractor, be like an NFL scout and look for these types of information. That will help you stay safe when you are shopping online.  Also businesses that have a KikScore seal certainly help shoppers get much of this trust and reliability information.  But just make sure you end up selecting the next Tom Brady and not Ryan Leaf when you decide to do business online!

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Business Lessons from the NFL Draft

First off, let me admit.  This isn’t going to be a highly researched blog post.  Not a shocker, as I love to write about whatever I’m watching on TV.  And what I’m watching is the NFL draft.  Specifically, I”m watching my Minnesota Vikings passing up on selecting Jimmy Clausen in the first round — trading their position in the draft to the Detroit Lions.  This leads to no pick in the first round.  About an hour ago, I was climbing the walls, as the Vikings need a quarterback, and Jimmy Clausen (though he’s from Notre Dame) is a good player. 

An hour has passed and I’m no longer doubting the wisdom of my team, as the first round is over and Jimmy Clausen hasn’t been picked and when the second round starts up tomorrow, the Vikings get to pick the second player of the day.  The Vikings showed patience and they’ll pick up the player they need (hopefully) and also gain picks from Detroit.  So, in watching the first round of the draft, I’ve taken away a few business lessons for KikScore:

1.  Patience generally pays off — ok, I’m being a bit influenced on Michael Lewis’ Moneyball on this — generally reputations are overrated, and role players are interchangeable.  Let others’ impatience work to your advantage and squeeze your competitors as hard as possible when they don’t realize the actual market value of an asset.

2.  Quantity beats Quality — at least in terms of talent selection.  Put another way, would you rather have one A student or three B+ students.  I’ll take the several B students — as there are too many D students out there that you may wind up with.

3.  Position is Key — If you really need a project manager, coming across a great salesperson doesn’t really help you. Draft for you business based on need.

I think that’s the best I can do for business lessons from the draft.  If you haven any suggestions, shoot them on over.

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Thoughts on 'Startup Advice in Exactly Three Words'

I recently stumbled upon this post by Dharmesh Shah on the OnStartups.com blog that got me thinking about the time that we have spent working on KikScore.  In this post Dharmesh comes up with 47 different 3 word phrases that offer advice to others while trying to start-up a new company.  After already having worked on our start-up company for the past 3 years, these pieces of advice triggered a few memories that enforced Dharmesh’s advice for me through these experiences.  Below I picked out a few of the phrases that rang true for me the most and I explain why I feel strongly about these.

Support customers maniacally – This could not be more true for the customers we currently have on our application.  Any customer issue that we receive immediately goes to the top of the priority list in order to address it immediately.  I think that this is a no-brainer for any business but especially for companies just starting out.

Persist through downturns – About 6 months after we started working on KikScore we entered into the recession that we have just now begun to dig out of.  While this definitely wasn’t ideal, I think that it made us focus more on our product and customers and will make us a better company in the long run.  I think that a lot of companies that make it through this recession will be better for it and it will help them learn a lot of lessons that they otherwise may not have.

Improve product daily – We are constantly looking for ways to improve our product and prioritizing these enhancements for release.  I think that it is very important for start-up companies to be regularly adding functionality to their products in order to make current and potential customers happy.

Use your product – Just about everyone on the KikScore team has either used the product themselves on a site they own or worked closely with a friend or family member to use it on their site.  I think that this has allowed us to get a unique perspective on our product and helped us improve it more efficiently for other customers to use.  I think this is important because sometimes the very companies that make great products don’t always use them and over time they become outdated because they don’t have that “real world” experience.

Do any of these items above, or the other 43 pieces of advice that Dharmesh offers, remind you of a decision you made while working on your business? 

(By the way, I must admit that I re-used the picture of the puppies on this post from Dharmesh’s post on the OnStartups.com blog.)

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Has the Recession Led to an Increase of Online Fraud?

Unemployment is officially around 10% (and there are estimates that the real unemployment is likely 20%).  It is likely that we’ll see this high level of unemployment for the next few years.  Does the recession and unemployment pose a threat to online security?

There have been a few articles linking the recession to an increase of online fraud.  Most of them are anecdotal (citing some instances of shoppers being scammed online), or bad math (saying that claims of online crime have gone up in 2008 and 2009 — forgetting that online shopping grew in those years as well).

The logic makes sense — that desperate times bring out the worst in people.  Cutting in favor of the argument is that it has never been easier to set up a website and start a (fraudulent) business.  The other way to look at it is that with individuals becoming more savvy online, fraudsters will have to be more sophisticated in their criminal activities (making it more unlikely that the newly unemployed just start committing online fraud).

Right now the jury seems to be out, but feel free to share your thoughts (or some conclusive studies on the link between online fraud and the recession).

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4 Reasons to Start Using KikScore Right Now to Demonstrate Trust & Increase Sales

So many times we have friends, family and now potential customers and small businesses that ask us why should I use KikScore.  So I am going to give you 4 quick reasons (there are more than 4 but 4 seemed like a good quick number) for why small businesses should start using KikScore. The unique thing about this post is I am actually going to use some of our old blog posts to explain why and to give you the reasons:

1) In at least 7 different ways, Kikscore helps small businesses and online merchants demonstrate trust to shoppers and visitors to your website. KikScore actually helps a small business with each of these 7 Steps to Increased Trust for More Online Sales.

2. You can Solicit and Listen to Customer Feedback. The KikScore seal and KikReport gives your small business a dynamic feedback platform to interact with your customers.  By using KikScore, you can listen, manage and respond to comments and also display customer feedback as testimonials for your business.  Tell your customers to skip Yelp and those other review sites and have those comments posted on your site instead of third party sites!

3. Your small business can use KikScore to introduce itself to the world through a video introduction.  Small Business are increasing Using Videos to Help Your Small Business and if you use the KikScore service you will be able to use our video platform on the KikReport to not only introduce yourself, but also as a product, educational and thought leadership video.

4.  It works!  Small businesses that have signed up for KikScore and placed the seal and KikReport on their sites, have seen an increase in their sales because they are giving their customers more information about their business.  These small businesses are also being more transparent to shoppers.  The success actually goes back to our very first customers that signed up late last year when we launched.  Here is just one of the testimonials that we have received about KikScore heping demonstrate trust for a small business and increasing the small businesses’ sales.

So please try KikScore out!  Or if you have questions about our service, please either call 1-877-KikScore or email us at support@kikscore.com.

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Online Shopping & Security Tips from CrunchGear's John Biggs

This is an excellent four minute video that KikScore recommends for both the small business community and online shoppers on tips to stay safe online.  The video features the author of Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals, and Scammers in the Internet Age, John Biggs.  In the video, John covers steps for staying safe when sharing data and information about yourself online, interacting on social networking sites, buying online and accessing the internet outside of your home. He has a lot of good guidance in the video including his rule to live by that you should not say or share information online that you would not be comfortable sharing in a crowded room.

Take a look, it is a good video.

Please tell us what you think about the tips John Biggs provided in the video in the comments section below.

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My Business is Hooked on the Internet (and Mad at Windows 7).

The other day I purchased a new computer (from the good folks at Dell…though they never hooked me up with a discount that I pleaded for on Twitter).  Love the computer and the new Windows 7 operating system.  I spend most of last weekend converting files and uploading all my computers to Windows 7.  All was right with the world. 

Then my home wireless network disappeared.  I couldn’t find it on my iphone or any of my computers.  Turns out that a lot of people that upgrade to Windows 7 have this same problem with their home network.  Since I’m not a full-blown technologist, I wasted most of Monday trying to trouble-shoot.  No success.  So I break down and call Geek Squad.  They are coming over tomorrow to fix. 

Besides being a pain, in the last couple of days, I’ve realized how much my business (personal and KikScore) relies on the ready availability of the Internet.  I can get by on certain things with my phone, but to really run a business, you need a computer hooked up to the Internet.  Which is really the opposite of how it used to be.  Back in the day, the Internet was a diversion to work…now it’s essential for business.  It’s more like a utility.

While it’s been an interesting social experiment — i’m ready for the return of my normal life.  I’ve got a lot riding on you Geek Squad.  Don’t let me (or my business) down.  As for you, Windows 7…you’ve got a lot of ground to make up.

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Who Do You Trust… and Why?

It is evident that building trust builds your brand. But, what encompasses trust? It’s critical in our personal lives, and imperative in business.

As a new ‘face’ in the eCommerce market, difficulties arise in not only reaching potential customers, but also in keeping them and creating the sticky bond.  A way to this is ‘trust‘, but what really defines trust?

It can be said that in the same fashion as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, trust is in the hand of the purchaser.  It’s a well known fact that if a consumer knows the brand, she will buy from a store that promotes said brand.  Even then though, it’s possible that a popular brand has been made available for sale on a not so safe website.  The underlying concern comes to what builds trust in a brand.

Trust not only applies to purchasing something online, but also in the decision making process of whether to hire Plumber A or B that you came across while frantically searching for someone to assist in the potential flood in your bathroom.  Just because Plumber A has a really cool logo on his website, does that mean he will be more trustworthy than Plumber B whose website is rather boring, yet touts that his repeat customers are the key to his business?

In certain cases, trust comes from gut feel and the more you can learn about the online merchant or service provider, the more informed a decision you are to make… and will most likely create a repeat customer if the experience is positive.

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Contemporary Furniture Expert, SmallBiz Owner & Blogger, Rebecca Malik, Talks to KikScore

Today’s small business interview is with the President of DC-based, 17thandRiggs.com’s Rebecca Malik.  Rebecca holds a dear place in KikScore’s hearts for a number of reasons besides the fact that she is just a very cool person, but she is also one of KikScore’s very first customers late last year when we launched.  Lucky for us she is very happy with KikScore.  Well, enough about us…..Rebecca comes from a family of a long line of entrepreneurs.  She has recently been tapping into that entrepreneurial lineage by working on a line of shoes, getting 17thandRiggs.com designed, developed and launched and blogging for two woman’s based small business and lifestyle community websites.  From these experiences and especially from her work that she has put in at building an ecommerce site from the ground up, she has some excellent guidance for our small business readers.

1. Tell us about 17thandRiggs.com and who you focus on serving?

17thandRiggs.com features contemporary furniture, lighting and home décor.  We focus on carrying pieces that have sleek, simple lines and evoke a sense of space.  The pieces are also chosen because they work well in many types of décor – they are not hyper-modern or too formal.  I feel that our customers are people who love a sophisticated, modern look, and focus on the overall picture.  They realize that an accent piece is as important as a focal point.  Also, I may be biased, but I think our careful selection of furnishings ensures that prestigious interior designers turn to us for their furniture and lighting needs.

2. How did you get your started selling online?

I’ve shopped online almost exclusively for years and know how hard I would look for items that fit my aesthetic and that I knew were of high quality at a good price.  This site is truly a way for me to pick and choose items that I love and make them accessible to others.  Beyond that, my father actually started selling handmade fireplace mantels online years ago.  His ability to reach customers across the country from his small shop in Florida was eye-opening.  After I left my last job at an interior design firm, I decided to take my interest and passion for design, contemporary furniture, lighting and decor and launch an online store.  That is the way 17thandRiggs.com was born.

3. Where will 17thandRiggs focus most of its energy in 2010?

We will be honing our product lines to ensure we carry our favorite designs.  These are furniture and décor pieces that are high-quality, beautiful and a great value.  We will also be steering our efforts to create an even more specialized lighting category.  Our lamps and pendants are consistently some of our biggest sellers and with their broad spectrum of designs they are always such fun items to handle.

I will also be continually reviewing my business and my marketing plan.  I feel like that is something that every business needs to do on a regular basis.  Otherwise you run the risk of not being focused and not having an underlying theme to everything that you are doing as a business.

4. If you had 2 lessons learned from your business that you could pass on to others about selling online, what are those?

I would say to start out simply – don’t try to offer everything but pick items that make the most sense from an inventory/availability perspective and that are cohesive with your vision for your site.  That and SEO is key.  Integrate your keywords as you go along.  Small businesses like mine can spend forever trying to keep the product information on your site up to date let alone trying to update SEO information so my suggestion would be to do it well the first time around. Here is a post I wrote on the subject titled: How To: An Entrepreneur Improves SEO For Her Ecommerce Site.

5.  What are 2 new trends in your business this year?

Of course, anything eco-friendly is as popular as ever.  As far as new trends, I see people getting more and more adventurous with their lighting choices.  Fun pendants and table lamps are great ways to push the envelope in your décor without making a huge purchase.

For an overall business trend, I would say that outsourcing from a small business perspective.  But it would not be outsourcing as the “four letter” word we know it as.  This would be focusing your small business on your core skills.  Then getting experts, freelancers, consultants, and virtual assistants to fill out the rest of your business and support you as you grow your business.  I now source resources and support for website design, virtual assistants and marketing support from places like Craigslist and Elance.  But you have to be careful and rigorously interview these folks before they are hiredbecause they will never care about your business and your customers like you do.

6. How have you used social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and your blog to help 17thandRiggs?

For me, Twitter has been a great way to learn about other organizations and companies out there with similar or complementary businesses.  It has also been a great place to get leads and also converse with other small businesses. My blog  (https://blog.17thandRiggs.com) has been a unique way for me to process things and continually think big picture regarding my business and the 17thandRiggs.com brand.  Sometimes having to hone into choosing a topic for an article forces you to think about the direction you are heading in and evaluating whether it fits your overall vision of my website, the business and my brand.  That can be very beneficial, especially when your business is at a crossroads.

I have also had the honor of being a guest contributor at the woman’s entrepreneur, startup and small business community site called  Women Grow Business that has been run by the super awesome Jill Foster and Shonali Burke (though I have been on a short hiatus lately since my lovely daughter, Asha, was born at the end of December!)  I recently started contributing to LVC Mag, a woman’s lifestyle community. Guest blogging has been a great experience for me and a nice way to connect and network with other entrepreneurs.  I recommend it for small businesses, especially those that are just starting out.

7. Do you have any parting thoughts?

As this is an interview for KikScore, it makes sense to touch upon my thoughts on the KikScore seal here.  I appreciate that it is a centralized way for customers to share thoughts about my business.  I also think the information they compile provides a fair and verified representation of my business to visitors of 17thandRiggs.com.  As a regular online shopper, I feel that combining financial and management information, website history and polices coupled with interactive customers’ reviews is a genius way to prove that you are a reputable company to deal with and give shoppers a good idea of what they can expect from the experience.  I also think the level of transparency it provides is invaluable in instilling confidence in visitors to our site and helping us convert them into customers.



We want to thank Rebecca for this interview. If you have any specific questions for Rebecca, please leave a comment and we will make sure we get them answered.  Also just for full disclosure, Rebecca somehow married one of my partner’s in KikScore, Raj.  My wife and I wonder every time we see Raj & Rebecca, what was Rebecca thinking!!!

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How Did My Credit Card Go To Europe Before I Could?

A few weeks ago, I’m standing in line at Chipotle, ready to pay.  The cashier runs my card several times, each indicating a decline.  It’s getting embarrassing because not only am I holding up the line, but my friends now think I can’t afford a $6 burrito. 

In a twist of fate, I actually had cash on hand, so I paid and returned to my seat in shame.  Let me reassure everyone that I can afford a $6 burrito…in fact I can afford up to seven $6 burritos (hopefully I’ve laid that terrible rumor to rest).  The lunch banter steers away from me (which is always painful), so I’m sitting there pretending to listen while I try to remember if I paid my credit card bill.  I secretly used my iPhone and logged into my credit card site.  Everything looks good.  What the hell is going on?!

I then spend the entire Saturday working my way through several unhelpful menus and operators — and I finally reach someone from the fraud department.  I must answer a battery of questions to prove I’m truly Dojo Mike.  Then the gentlemen says “let me run through a few recent transactions”

Me: Ok

Credit Card:  Did you recently purchase $40 at [online company withheld]

Me: Yep

Credit Card:  How about $7,000 in Milan?

Me: Italy?

CC: Yes.

Me: Uh no.

Appears that I had made an online purchase that wasn’t secure.  Now a couple copies of my credit card were on an extended European vacation — spending a lot of time (and money) in Italy.  I had to cancel the card and put fraud alerts on my credit report for all three credit bureaus.  I’m also “encouraged” by the credit card company to monitor my bank accounts and online investments. 

I know online shopping is very convenient, but when security comes into question, the ill-prepared businesses can cause their shoppers quite a few headaches (and liabilities).  Clearly this is related to KikScore (as all online sites should use it to help prevent similar issues for their customers), but this truly did happen to me — and I’ll never shop at that online store again.  I’m also jealous that my credit card was able to enjoy Italy before me.

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